Rockwall trip, September 2026
Last year, on day 2 of the Tour du Mont Blanc, I ended up hiking with a veterinary professor from Saskatchewan for some of the day. We had an enjoyable conversation, and while I don't remember most of it, I do remember that he raved about a trail in the Canadian Rockies called the Rockwall. Because I enjoyed the TMB so much, I've decided to do a backpacking trip every year from now on. This year, I decided to do the Rockwall. I had also been chatting with a college friend of mine named Blake about the TMB and how he wanted to do more backpacking, so I asked him if he was interested in joining me, and he said yes. So we slowly planned out the trip over the course of a few months. One big part of it was getting permits for campsites along the trail, but more on that below.
What is the Rockwall trail? It's a 54 kilometer long trail in the Canadian Rockies, specifically Kootenay national park in British Columbia, which is about an hour west of Banff, Alberta. It runs roughtly north-south and is just to the east of a fairly dramatic mountain range which includes a feature called the Rockwall, which is, as you might guess, a 1-2 mile long side of a ridge that is a sheer cliff with probably over a thousand foot drop. The trail goes right by it and the views are great. Anyway, here is my writeup, with some pictures.
Sunday 9/13, day 1
Blake and I had flown in to Calgary separately the previous night and picked up a rental car, then stayed at a hotel near the airport. We got an early start from Calgary, with lots of fog on the highway. We did the typical Canadian thing and got breakfast at a Tim Horton's in Canmore. We also picked up bear spray from a
Canadian Tire, and fuel for our cooking stove in Banff. We drove to the starting trailhead at a place called Paint Pots, named for some colorful geothermal pools nearby. We got going and started a gentle ascent.
We were mostly in the trees at first but got a few nice views of nearby mountains. After a campground called Helmet Creek, the trail turned
to go up, and that's when we started getting great views of the Rockwall. Words and pictures don't do it justice. It's
this massive, tall, side of a ridge that goes on for a mile or two. Simply amazing.
Things got a bit difficult after that. We realized that instead of descending directly to our campsite, we were going
to have to descend a bit, then climb up to a second pass which went on for a mile or more and was quite exposed. The elevation profile we had seen said it was a total of 800
meters for the day, but we ended up climbing 1,300 meters overall. The distance we saw (and did) was correct, at about
17 miles. So it was a bit more work than we expected. On top of that, the wind picked up and it started to drizzle.
The drizzle even turned to wet snow for a bit. We layered up and kept going, and finally descended to our lovely
campsite at Tumbling Creek. We filtered water, put up the tent, got dinner, and went to bed. I was thankful for my
nice new warm sleeping bag. During the night, I believe I heard an animal snuffling at Blake's side of the tent at two
different times. I think it was either an elk or a bear, but it didn't bother us.
